[Deer Park, August 27, 2009]

Mosquitoes here are big enough to hunt
With a crossbow and lethal bolts of steel.
Weather comes and goes with rapidity
So astonishing one can’t help wonder
If God’s trying to figure out how it works.
A forest separates the Lake from us,
But we hear waves thundering all night.
Crows pretend they’re roosters, and sand-hills
Honk days’ end, descending toward lake flats
Our dog smells like he was the neglected
Pet of infamous Stalag Seventeen.
The house is redolent of fermenting
Neoprene in long cured human sweat.
Our water-well pumps orange iron.
Spiders ignore customary insects
And devour garden fare as if tapeworms
Are asserting unending demands for food.
We have horseflies, stableflies, blackflies, ants
Deer flies, chiggers, noseeums, earwigs in our
Plants,lots of moths, just down the road some teenage Goths.
Deer eat the garden and wolves eat the deer
We conclude nature’s in perfect balance.
To summarize, we live it entirely
And will return with next season’s summer.